Systematic and Explicit Instruction on Using Adjectives in Complete Sentences

Nov 14, 2023

2 min read

What are Adjectives?

Adjectives describe nouns. They can tell what a noun looks, sounds, smells, feels, or tastes like. Adjectives can also describe the personality or feelings of people and animals. Numbers are adjectives because they describe how many of a noun there are. Adjectives do not change for singular, plural, or proper nouns. Adjectives always have the same form.

Here is a video to help your students understand adjectives.

Example Sentences

After introducing adjectives to your students, you will want to show them examples. When looking at example sentences, point out the capitalized first letter, spacing between words, and ending punctuation. Speaking of ending punctuation. I recommend sticking with periods until you can give a lesson on the other types of ending punctuation.

This should be a quick part of the lesson. You can ask students what they notice but quickly point out the important parts of the sentence. In this case, make sure your students notice that adjectives come before the nouns they are describing. You may also want to point out that adjectives do not change form even if the form of the noun changes. The noun determines if you need an article before the adjective or not. The lesson on singular and plural nouns goes over article rules.

Adjectives Pictures

You can show these five pictures to your students to help them brainstorm adjectives. Give students about thirty seconds to think about each picture. Then, have them share with a partner. Finally, collect three to five ideas per picture to record in a class anchor chart.

Printable Resources

These ideas will get you started teaching your adjectives lessons, but we have printable resources that will make a huge difference. Luckily, my team at For the Love has you covered! You can get all of these resources to make planning and teaching a breeze!

Word List: A list of words for the lesson for when your mind goes blank while brainstorming.

Word Chart: A tool for students to organize words they will use to write sentences. Students record words from brainstorming on their word charts, so when they write sentences, they can focus their attention on the mechanics and syntax of the sentence instead of coming up with new ideas. Word charts are the perfect place to integrate social studies and science lessons into writing.

Example Sentences: A list of example sentences that fit the purpose of the lesson. You can use these to build anchor charts, differentiate instruction or practice for students, or clarify your own understanding of the topic.

Sentence Practice: Students will use the words from their word charts to write complete sentences. The sentence practice pages have more suggestion words as well as reminders about the mechanics of a complete sentence. Students who do not need the support of the handwriting lines can write on a piece of notebook paper, or you can give them the alternate writing paper. It does not have the specific lesson information on it.